Puerto Rico Status Plebiscite: Joint Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Native American and Insular Affairs of the Committee on Resources and the ... Relations, House of Representatives, - Tapa blanda

Reseña del editor

Excerpt from Puerto Rico Status Plebiscite: Joint Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Native American and Insular Affairs of the Committee on Resources and the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives, 104th Congress; Oct., 17, 1995

I tell the sad story of my father's funeral, where the Puerto Rican and the American flags were both on the casket and someone said to me, why is the American flag on your father's casket. I said, he wanted it that way; he served in the Army. About half an hour later, he came back to me and said, you know, I had no idea that the Puerto Rican Army used the American flag.

While we laugh at it and I do myself, that is an indication of the lack of understanding of a very serious problem, because it is a se rions problem. I want to preface this next comment by saying that I don't ever mean any disrespect to people who are supporters of the commonwealth, when I say that I believe Puerto Rico is a col ony.

I don't say that as a person who is Puerto Rican; I say it as a Member of the United States Congress, in how I, as a Member of Congress, treat the island legally, not emotionally, not from my heart, but legally. It is a colon It cannot make its own deals with foreign countries; it cannot re use to go to war; it cannot take care of its borders. That to me leaves no other alternative but to say that it is a colony.

So then I ask myself, how can this, the greatest Nation on earth, the one who professes to tell the world how to behave and indeed uses all its might to do so, continue to hold a colony while, in fact, not far in an island in the Caribbean, it continues to tell people to hold election, the same kind of election it refuses to hold in Puerto Rico for the people to determine their future and their status.

So I, finding myself, Mr. Chairman and members of the commit tee, in this unique situation, continue to ask ourselves to deal with this issue, to solve the situation. Whatever the situation solving may be, and there are people here who will tell you that solving the situation is to change the current status. If that is the case, let it be a decision of the people in conjunction with the Congress, the same Congress that is the representative arm of a government that invaded the island in 1898 and hasn't left yet.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.